


Things Fall Apart

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Red Robin (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Bruce Wayne is Trying, Catharsis, Dissociation, Family Drama, Feelings, Fictober 2018, Gen, Hot Chocolate, Meltdown, Secret Identity Fail, Try Harder, according to tumblr, damian wayne doesn't make things easy, parenting, tim has unreasonable expectations of himself, unhealthy sibling dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 00:53:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16651168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: Everyone has a limit.





	Things Fall Apart

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry I've been AWOL lately. I did this for the fictober prompt: "Try harder, next time." It went over well.

The autumn wind was cold and the sky was flat grey. 

“There have been eight more casualties since you took over the case.”

“There would only have been five if _Robin_ hadn’t been so determined to show me up he ran off with my evidence so I had to spend an hour hunting him down and fighting him for it.”

Bruce shook his head. This wasn’t the time or place for this conversation, and Tim knew that, but he kept arguing anyway, with everything Bruce said, every time he tried to make a final pronouncement and go. He wished he could stop. Bruce said, “You need to stop letting him provoke you.”

“I _tried_ ,” Tim snapped, feeling about thirteen seconds from _actually_ snapping.

“Try harder, next time.”

Okay, no, wait, apparently it was _two_ seconds.

The butt of his staff slammed into the nearest car window and smashed it in in a sharp burst of sound, followed by the gentler patter and jingle of falling glass.

Bruce paused, halfway into climbing into the driver’s seat, then unfolded out again and gazed at Tim over the roof of his now vandalized shiny billionaire Jaguar. “Tim—”

“Try _harder?_ ” Tim’s voice had gone up in pitch so it was almost a shriek, and he didn’t even have the resources to be embarrassed. “Harder? _You_ are telling _me_ to try HARDER? After everything—after all this time—”

He dragged his breath in with a rattle, and spun the staff down to hit pavement. _Clack._ Every sound seemed loud as a gunshot on this empty street. “You think my mental health is precarious enough you’ve got an _entire protocol_ set up in case I snap and start killing people, and you hear Alfred lecture me about overworking at least twice a month, and you can look at your baby monster sabotaging me and tell me to _try harder_ not to let him? What—what….”

Fuck, he was crying. It felt like lines of fire down his face. He took a step forward, so Bruce’s eyes on him could look straight across the fancy sports car instead of along a diagonal, and smashed in the front passenger’s window too. “He’s thirteen! He’s not a little kid! What do you think you’re teaching him at this point?”

Bruce hadn’t reacted in any way to the second broken window. It made everything in Tim ache, made him want to fly apart in a million directions, made him want to jump in the car and accelerate it into a brick wall and jump free at the very last moment. “I didn’t say Damian wasn’t in trouble for what he did,” he stated calmly.

A laugh ripped its way out of Tim, violent as a terminal cough. The tears had stopped, at least. “Oh good! He got three people killed to make me look bad, but at least he’s been told that’s a no-no! Maybe he isn’t getting dessert with dinner tonight?”

“Do you think he needs additional punishment?” Bruce sounded mildly curious.

“Additional—are you saying _losing a fight to me_ is his entire punishment? He’s going to come back twice as angry, I _hate_ fighting him because no matter how it turns out he wins! Yes, he needs punishment, if that’s what will make him actually listen!”

“It would help,” Bruce said after a second, “if you would come to me before dealing with the problem yourself.”

“If I—are you suggesting I should start complaining to you every time your brat acts up? Just—go running off to _tattle to Dad_ while he’s sabotaging my cases or my jumpline or my relationships?”

“Why not?”

“Well, apart from the fact that I keep getting told to be the _adult_ in this situation and I don’t see how going whining to the nearest parent is anything but childish—”

“When did I tell you to be the adult? I mean, you are, but only barely.”

“Yes, thanks, I’m actually almost twenty,” Tim said through his teeth.

Bruce made a dismissive gesture. “I do hold you to a higher standard,” he admitted. “Maybe too much. You’re right, you’re under a lot of stress.”

Tim felt everything collapse. Because _yes_ he was stressed, he was coming apart at the seams, he’d lost his whole life over the course of about eighteen months and there was nowhere left he could even go to lick his wounds and pull himself back together, because if any of his old havens existed at _all_ anymore Damian was always there at them, jealously shoving him away from _his_ house or cave or city or team or brother or parent. Tim still couldn’t believe Dick had somehow managed to give the brat the Titans.

Yes, he was under a lot of stress, and he’d wanted that acknowledged, wanted Bruce to realize how hard he was pushing himself, how hard he _tried_ to get everything right.

But _I hold you to too high a standard_ was crushing, it was the loss of everything, it was being unable to live up even to the expectations he’d created for himself. It was the final rejection. It was everything. It was the crushing of all hope.

When he remembered how to be embarrassed again he was going to die from an overload of that, too, but for now there was only this.

He realized distantly that he had listed in against the side of the car, both hands clutched spasmodically around his staff like it was the last solid thing in the world even though he could barely feel it. What was the point of anything, if this was what it came down to? If he could never prove himself again. If there was no level of usefulness that could earn him back even a fraction of what he’d lost.

If all he had to look forward to was disappearing steadily behind the umbra of Damian’s importance, until he went home and the family just grimaced uneasily at the thought of the inevitable _scene_ that was going to result when Damian took exception to his presence, and he failed to handle it in a way that didn’t cause problems for everybody.

There was a keening noise like a distant siren, and his throat hurt, and he realized the pain wasn’t from holding back tears because he was actually crying again, harder than ever. He let go of his staff and slid down the side of the car.

Try harder. Try _harder_. Don’t mess this up. You can’t afford to fail. You can’t afford to be wrong. Succeeding every time is doing the bare minimum, and if you only manage that and don’t excel that makes you disappointing, and if you fail that’s the end. He’d always known this, he’d been prepared for this, he’d known if he wasn’t good enough he’d lose Robin. But he hadn’t been prepared to be left for someone who was worse at almost _everything_. Besides murder. And probably lots of other things by now.

Of course he’d played out his potential, while Damian was still growing, he understood that. Ra’s was apparently the only one who didn’t, or maybe it was just that _he_ realized that a burn-out was easier to tempt into reaching for new sources of power, and anyway whatever he said, 90% of it was always lies.

Tim had had a lot of low moments over the last several years but he couldn’t believe he was so pathetic he couldn’t seem to get up right now just because of _words_.

Bruce had come around the hood of the car and was getting down on the sidewalk in front of him, and for some reason it was that sight that woke Tim up to the fact that billionaire Bruce Wayne having a quarrel with the vigilante Red Robin was a bad thing to have been doing in public, that this was just a bad catastrophic thing he had made happen, because he had nothing left to bring to the table and Damian was probably right and he should just stop trying to make himself relevant to people who’d stopped needing him a long time ago.

He’d said back when he started he didn’t expect to do this for more than a few years, right? Well, ten years at the outside. It hadn’t been quite that long yet. But he’d always said he’d go back to a normal life once he wasn’t needed anymore and he _should_ do that, he should, he should just…walk away.

Bruce was talking but Tim couldn’t make out the words. “It’s fine,” he tried to insist. “It’s okay, I’m just making a scene, go on, get out of here, somebody’s going to see, fuck I’m sorry.”

Bruce was shaking his head and continuing to talk. This was no more productive than it had been before. Tim continued to try to get across that Bruce needed to be going away, not grabbing him by the shoulders, but then it turned out he was getting Tim away from the car, because of course he couldn’t drive away with Tim leaning on it, stupid. Except then he was opening the door and trying to put Tim inside. Which was obviously a terrible plan.

But apparently nothing would do but Tim got into the car, so he did rather than have Bruce continue crouching here in his stupid Armani. The seat was still full of broken glass but it was safety glass and he was in his suit, so it was mostly just lumpy.

The ringing in his ears faded by the time it was obvious they were heading toward the house, which meant he had to listen to himself sniffling and letting out the occasional strange whining noise as he tried and failed to get himself under control, but he also heard Bruce calling ahead while he drove (illegal!) to ask Dick to take Damian out somewhere, right away, urgently. Which was the only reason he suffered himself to be led tamely in the front door, down the hall and into the den—in his costume, shedding the occasional rhomboid of safety glass as he went—and be settled down on the squashiest couch, up against one arm, facing inward.

Bruce peeled the mask off his face and he didn’t object—he’d fogged up the lenses something terrible anyway, and with this much moisture soaking into the fabric the issue wasn’t going to resolve itself right away.

Alfred appeared with a mug held carefully in both hands due to its towering crown of whipped cream, and Bruce took it and handed it to Tim, who accepted it warily, not trusting the steadiness of his hands. He embedded his nose in the whipped cream to slurp the level of cocoa down about a quarter of an inch, then addressed himself to lapping up enough cream to guarantee structural stability.

“I think,” said Bruce, dragging him back into the more complicated world of real problems rather than the limited, controlled one of hot chocolate harm reduction methods, “that I haven’t been taking this situation as seriously as it deserves.”

Tim took a sharp swallow of cocoa, not burning his tongue because Alfred was brilliant like that, and rested the mug on the arm of the sofa, scrubbing at his bare face with the back of the gauntlet not occupied balancing cocoa. “The poisoning case, no, it’s not that huge a deal, I’ll have them by tomorrow if nothing else goes wrong—”

“I didn’t mean the case.” And Bruce looked awful, Tim realized, strained but _sad_ , his eyes large and miserable the way they got when Dick wasn’t speaking to him, or when he used to talk about Jason.

Shit. Was it _that_ hard on him, Tim not being able to walk off Damian’s shenanigans? Being reminded his only real son was a troublemaker? Having strife in his family? “I’m sorry,” he muttered, looking at his knees, and oh look, embarrassment had caught up. He’d never understood when people claimed they felt better after a good cry. “I’ll try harder.”

Bruce’s hand came out and closed over his shoulder. “No, Tim. I will.”


End file.
